Relationships

Relationships determine how entities and instruments relate to each other.

Investigations typically involve an entity, user, financial account, or even an NFT and how it relates to another entity, user, financial account, or NFT.

During your onboarding on the Unit21 platform, our implementation specialists will talk to your fraud analysts to define what your key risk signals are as well as the relationships between users and objects on your platform.

Example include (but are not limited to):

  • Employer / Employee
  • Beneficiaries / Originator
  • Referrals
  • Account ownership
  • NFT authoring

When relationships in your system are defined correctly in the Unit21 system, it is easier to view and represent your data. Additionally, you will be able to create rules based on those relationships such as:

  • if you block a user, you can flag any other user that person has referred
1868

When creating an instrument, you can define its relationship with other entities:

{
  "entities": [
    {
      "entity_id": "123",
      "relationship_id": "owner",
      "entity_type": "user"
    },
    {
      "entity_id": "456",
      "relationship_id": "owner",
      "entity_type": "user"
    }
  ]
}

relationship_id is a human readable ID that gets created through the dashboard with help from our implementation team during your onboarding.

Note that this is fully backwards compatible, and that Unit21 uses a default relationship if relationship_id is not provided.

When creating an entity, you can define its relationship with other entities and instruments:

{
  "relationships": {
    "parents": [
      {
        "entity_id": "123",
        "entity_type": "user",
        "relationship_id": "referral"
      }
    ],
    "children": [
      {
        "entity_id": "123",
        "entity_type": "user",
        "relationship_id": "employee"
      }
    ],
    "undirected": [
      {
        "entity_id": "123",
        "entity_type": "user",
        "relationship_id": "friend"
      }
    ],
    "instruments": [
      {
        "instrument_id": "123",
        "relationship_id": "author"
      }
    ]
  }
}

relationship_id is a human readable ID that gets created through the dashboard with help from our implementation team during your onboarding.

Note that Unit21 maintains full backwards compatibility, nothing changes with the existing parents: or instrument_ids in general_data. There is simply a new relationships section.

Relationships defined:

FieldDescriptionExample
parentsThe parent of this entity (higher in terms of hierarchy){ "entity_id": "1", "entity_type": "ceo", "relationship_id": "employer" }
childrenThe child of this entity (lower in terms of hierarchy){ "entity_id": "467", "entity_type": "cashier", "relationship_id": "employee" }
undirectedA generic relation of this entity (equals in terms of hierarchy){ "entity_id": "123", "entity_type": "user", "relationship_id": "friend" }
instrumentsInstruments that relate to the entity (instrument belongs to the entity){ "instrument_id": "123", "relationship_id": "author" }
entitiesEntities that relate to the instrument (entity owns the instrument){ "entity_id": "456", "relationship_id": "owner", "entity_type": "user" }